In second grade at our school, we had some success splitting up our classes for English Language Development time. In California this is a required 30 minutes a day that I get the sense is rarely implemented. One teacher would take ELD 1-2 (that was me), another took ELD 2-3, another 3-5, and then we …
Category: Open Court Reading
How an iPod could revolutionize your teaching…
I’ve already written about how you can easily use an iPod to turn reading fluency assessments into a tool for students to review and self-assess their own reading as well as allowing you to keep recordings of readings to review and play for parents at parent conferences. See previous post. If that seems like too …
Writer’s Workshop
I’m hearing some online grumbling about Writer’s Workshop lately, specifically how you come up with mini-lessons. The good news…you don’t have to have a book to give you mini-lessons (although I can recommend a few) On the first day you model for students how you write but after that, your mini-lessons come from assessing your …
Reader’s Theater FAQ
Cable in the Classroom readers: If you’re looking for examples of our video projects, see Video in the Classroom.com Reader’s Theater is a fantastic way to increase reading fluency by providing students with an authentic reason to reread. It also benefits reading comprehension by placing students inside stories.What is it? Reader’s theater involves reading a …
Imagine It!
The 2008 edition of the Open Court Reading program has its own name, Imagine It. At least half of the units are the same though most have been moved around and sometimes switched to a different grade. Not a lot of resources for this edition yet but what’s available you can find by visiting ImagineIt! …
American Heroes Biography Project
This idea was submitted by Mary Hahn, who retired last month after forty-one years in the teaching profession. Many of my best ideas in the past three years have come from her classroom and we’re not even at the same school. Thank you, Mary! This project has worked very successfully in my classroom to get …
New Powerpoints 3rd & 6th
3rd and 6th grades have gotten a huge boost. Thank you to Pam Chinelli who is continuing to create vocabulary powerpoints for all of the 3rd grade units. So far the first three units are finished. And thank you to Carol Harms who has submitted background knowledge powerpoints for some of the 6th grade units …
Five Things to do Before Starting School Thursday (if you start school Thursday)
1. Revamp your workshop/independent work time. No doubt by the end of the previous school year your IWT was starting to fall apart. It always does even if only slightly. Plan to start IWT off right this year. I usually start in the second week of school by picking a time that will remain sacred …
Time Management in Open Court
The demands of the program are such that you need to maximize every minute of your teaching. I have been asked frequently how I am able to fit in Independent Work Time, Writer’s Workshop, all of OCR, and other curricular areas. I think the answer is moving quickly through the program components. You cannot do …
How to Use Cloze Stories to Teach Unit Vocabulary
Thank you to Jan Tappan for submitting vocabulary cloze stories for the third grade Open Court units. Cloze stories, for those who need a refresher, are stories with key words left out. Cloze stories can be used to assess student comprehension because if a student is understanding what they are reading they will fill in …